Gold, silver, pgms, mining and geopolitical comment and news

On a day when the gold price, at the time of writing, had temporarily breached the $1300 level, before coming back a little – a rise of 23% since close on December 31 2015 – and with silver up 29% over the same period, after a bit of a slow start, it is interesting to see the massive gains experienced by many of the top gold and silver stocks over the same period. All prices quoted are in US dollars on US exchanges for comparative purposes, again at the time of writing.

We have also included, top royalty/streaming companies, Franco Nevada in the gold stocks table, and Silver Wheaton in the silver stocks table to show the relative performances of what might be considered safer ways of investing in these two precious metals sectors.

Selected Gold Mining Majors – US$ Quotes

Company

U.S. Ticker

Price 12/31/2015

Price 5/2/16

gain

Barrick

ABX

7.4

19.4

+162%

Newmont

NEM

18.0

35.0

+94%

AngloGold

AU

7.1

16.9

+138%

Goldcorp

GG

11.6

20.14

+74%

Kinross

KGC

1.8

5.7

+217%

Gold Fields

GFI

2.8

4.7

+46%

Agnico Eagle

AEM

26.3

47.8

+82%

Sibanye

SBGL

6.1

14.9

+144%

Yamana

AUY

1.9

5.2

+174%

Freeport*

FCX

6.8

14.1

+107%

Randgold

GOLD

61.9

100.2

+62%

Harmony

HMY

0.9

3.7

+311%

Franco Nevada

FNV

45.75

70.4

+54%

Gold price

1061

1300

23%

Source: Metals Focus, Company Data

*FCX is primarily a base metals stock (copper) but is one of the world’s largest gold producers so gold has a significant impact on its stock price.

The tables are a great demonstration of the gains that can be made in a rising gold and silver price environment, after a long downturn. But of course the rises are also vulnerable to any significant gold and silver price downturn to an equal extent. In investment timing is everything and, given the huge rises seen in some Tier 1 stocks, the tables suggest that they had been hugely oversold when sentiment moved against gold and silver. The big question is can both stocks and metal prices hold through the Summer doldrums period beginning around now?